Around 1 in 700 calls that come into banks are fraudulent. Contact centers provide the perfect target for fraudulent calls. Pindrop Security research shows that, for every call into a bank (or other financial service center), about 57 cents are lost as a result of fraud. For a call center, this means about $1.5M a year is being lost to fraud!
With recent technology coming out, committing fraud has only gotten easier and more common. In the year 2015, over 13.1 million people identified as victims to fraud.
Most fraudulent calls, in the case of contact centers, are more difficult to combat and frequently go undetected until the money lost reaches massive numbers. Agents who handle these calls are busy focusing on their main work, as they often fall victim to initial contact with people committing fraud. This is not surprising- after all, they are the first line of defense.
From the perspective of agents, fraudulent calls lead to a loss in productivity by forcing them to screen every single call.
On the other hand, however, fraudulent cases have driven the technology industry to a new high to assist in the war against fraud. In order to protect the consumers, businesses now have to seek better prevention.
Prevention always beats a cure. That’s why contact center heads and fraud management professionals must remain focused on advancing their systems to help keep things secure- keeping the good guys in, and the bad guys out.
Voice biometrics
Voice biometrics are a great line of defense against phone fraud. Like a fingerprint, a voice is unique and never easily mimicked. In voice biometrics, a voice is matched to an existing “voiceprint”. A voiceprint marked positive saves on time and gives a higher level of security than any other systems from the past.
Meanwhile, a negative “voiceprint” automatically moves the caller to a list that marks them as suspicious. According to Spiceworks, more than half organizations use fingerprint systems for authentication while roughly 14% use face recognition systems. The same study projects that nearly all businesses will be using this tech by 2020.
Multifactor authentication (MFA)
This kind of authentication is another simple way to protect against fraud. It combines several different identity intelligences from diverse levels, blended with clever authentication methods. Simply put, it works by using extra measures like device and phone intelligence, one-use passwords, and so on. Its subset named two factor authentication (2FA), is a multifaceted authentication that quickly unravels any attempt at fraud or account access.
Device authentication
Device authentication is a layer of protection that gets triggered by using a mobile device to start certain interactions. Using this method to verify can subtly sabotage a fraud attempt, or flag a call. It uses behind-the-scenes method that does not interrupt the customer-agent dialogue.
In addition to this method, there is in-app authentication that works across multiple devices that allows the user to operate through an installed enterprise app. Survey results report the years 2018 and 2019 shows a jump of 9% in 2019.
Ready to learn more about authentication and customer information management? Come read our blog! Customer Identity Management in Contact Centers: Why it Matters!